Monday, August 22, 2011

I Found It

Yesterday when my husband and kids arrived home from the movies I reported I'd still not found that darned textbook. I kept looking even as they left to go on a bike ride. Before leaving my husband remarked of the tens of thousands of dollars we'd spent this month on this move and said to stop looking as what's another $50 to spend? He gave his blessings to go buy the book new. I decided to try to find a new or used copy at the local homeschool supply stores. Yes, for the first time in my life I have two local retail stores that sell curriculum to homeschoolers!

But, I didn't stop. I kept looking while I was alone. Then I decided I needed a break and was thinking that I'd recently bought some Saxon math curriculum and remembered finding it out and unpacked which surprised me. It somehow was left out with a few other homeschool materials in my kitchen near where I kept my currently-being-used homeschool stuff. I wondered if since I packed that late, I also packed the AoPS text in with it?

After everyone got back I asked to take a drive around looking at the neighborhoods that I hope we can buy a home in after our Connecticut home sells. The ride was refreshing (and very cold thanks to blasting car air conditioning), as the interior temperature of our house was 83 degrees at that point in the evening. I was no longer mad about the lost book but really wanted to find it. Most of my anger dissapated when I realized that perhaps in error the box that it was in got mistakenly placed into the storage unit that was packed up solid and nine feet high. Maybe I was looking for a needle in a haystack for nothing?

As soon as we got home I said I wanted to look for a few minutes, even though it was after nine o'clock. I started going through boxes a little more deeply if I'd skimmed the tops of them before, and I opened some that were not opened prior. I found an unopened one that had more cookbooks from my kitchen hutch and a few homeschool books and realized that I could be close but that was not it.

My appetite for success whetted, I opened the box below it which had books that were out on my coffee table in the library room, they were various subject books such as books very recently purchased on Amazon with a plan to use for homeschooling curriculum in fall 2011. As I dug down through the history books, I found the Saxon math! Then right underneath it was the AoPS algebra book.

Success!

I screamed out my success from the garage so that my family could hear.

Yippee!

It is hard work, this being tenacious thing, and it takes persistence to keep up the pace when being relentless, but when it's for a good cause, it is worth it, and it can mean the difference between success and failure, between getting something done and making no progress.

During the looking for the book process I got a lot of unpacking and organizing done, no time was wasted in the pursuit of one book. Perhaps the only time when being hyper-focused on achieving one task is a bad thing is when it becomes all-consuming and does not allow other things to get done, or when it is a low priority project that a person puts at the top of the priority list and neglects more important things.